Within your ISP's network bandwidth is cheap, once it has to move over to other networks then those 5Mbps streams start adding up quite quickly. If 1600 people on an ISP were to steam in HD simultaneously (which really isn't a large number of people for a large ISP) then you're talking about 1GB (thats byte and not bit) of bandwidth every second. There's a reason why content distributions networks like Akamai and companies like Google tend to peer at ISPs as well.
What it certainly isn't is anything to do with net neutrality, and trying to claim that it is is either born of misunderstanding what net neutrality is, or trying to be deliberately obtuse. No one is prioritising one type of traffic over another, nor are they prioritising connections to one website over another. They're simply saying that there are real practical limitations involved in offering certain services, so they're partnering with any willing ISP to offer those services.
It was an amazing let down to see this. Despite my 100mbps connection, I get a line of text that says nothing more than "Ask your ISP to join the Netflix Open Connect Network".
Yeah, uhh, okay. My ISP is the largest in the country. If you can't arrange your content sharing network with them, I'm fairly sure me calling a Tier 1 CSR reading off a scripted dialog is going to make all the difference in the world.
The point is, and maybe I was vague about it, hence my downvotes:
If Netflix is offering a service and can't even get the largest, most common ISP that their customers use to agree to their "free" peering arrangements to offer even better content, then that appears a little ... disappointing, and not particularly hope-inducing to me.
Within your ISP's network bandwidth is cheap, once it has to move over to other networks then those 5Mbps streams start adding up quite quickly. If 1600 people on an ISP were to steam in HD simultaneously (which really isn't a large number of people for a large ISP) then you're talking about 1GB (thats byte and not bit) of bandwidth every second. There's a reason why content distributions networks like Akamai and companies like Google tend to peer at ISPs as well.
What it certainly isn't is anything to do with net neutrality, and trying to claim that it is is either born of misunderstanding what net neutrality is, or trying to be deliberately obtuse. No one is prioritising one type of traffic over another, nor are they prioritising connections to one website over another. They're simply saying that there are real practical limitations involved in offering certain services, so they're partnering with any willing ISP to offer those services.